


Yesterday There Were More of Us

by raven_aorla



Category: 18th Century CE RPF, Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Angst and Humor, Bittersweet, Canon Era, Canon Queer Character, Drinking, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Nostalgia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-20
Updated: 2017-02-20
Packaged: 2018-09-25 19:42:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,646
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9841103
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/raven_aorla/pseuds/raven_aorla
Summary: "I promised I’d buy him a drink if he managed to convince Hamilton that Italian sheep grow green wool. I never got the chance to honor the bet. Let me in.”It's 1824, and Lafayette is back in America. An old friend tracks him down.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I have no evidence of this meeting ever happening, but it's not totally implausible. Also, the stuff with du Ponceau's family is vague because du Ponceau's autobiography was mostly written for or transcribed by his granddaughter Anna. It doesn't talk much about stuff she'd already know. On top of that, I took a liberty or two for thematic reasons.
> 
> Guess which anecdotes I made up. The majority, I did not.
> 
> TW: a memory of being hit as a small child is treated as funny because of period-typical attitudes towards corporal punishment, and because the reason was so unusual. The author does not wish to trivialize or condone it in real life.

Lafayette wasn’t napping. Old men napped in their dotage, which he hadn’t yet reached, thank you very much. He was merely sitting quietly in a comfortable chair, eyes half-lidded, thinking on the events of the day, and all the wonderful and exhausting parties all these Americans insisted on throwing him. Wonderful, exhausting Americans who knew of him.

Of him. They didn’t know him. Jefferson did, yes, and to a lesser extent Monroe, but they were complicated company and weren’t accompanying him on this grand tour. They weren’t there for the wonderful, exhausting sights and sounds. He felt ungrateful for wanting more.

It was more than he’d expected to ever have again. Even the sight of the horizon had been a novelty after being released from prison. Adrienne, Anastasie, and Virginie had said the same. Virginie started horseback riding so often and so vehemently that they’d all worried she would hurt herself, and Anastasie went for long walks and picked flowers for her ailing mother (until she was picking flowers for her mother’s grave, instead). Georges, having escaped it all and irrationally guilty about it, started fussing over his sisters until their husbands told him to stop. He started watching over his father instead. It was mostly welcome attention. 

Georges was in the less comfortable chair, reading. Then there was a knock on the door and he was on his feet in an automatic military stance. 

Lafayette smiled and said gently, “At ease, soldier. It’s probably Levasseur. Or a chambermaid. Or Levasseur and a chambermaid, like after that time he participated in a few too many toasts.” They'd not been at an inn that night, but in someone's grand house. The chambermaid had demurely rebuffed Lafayette’s secretary’s attempts at gallant wooing and dragged him to Lafayette for further advice on how to proceed. Auguste Levasseur had apologized next day, and Georges convinced their host to increase her wages for her level-headedness.

Georges stalked to the door and opened it by such a slight crack that Lafayette couldn’t see who it was. “He’s resting and is not to be disturbed.”

“I did not pull a multitude of strings to get to this door just to be turned away once I'd reached it.” The perfect English switched to likewise perfect French. “I haven’t seen your father in far too long. I promised I’d buy him a drink if he managed to convince Hamilton that Italian sheep grow green wool. I never got the chance to honor the bet. Let me in.”

Lafayette shoved his son aside and greeted his guest with an embrace and touches almost unseemly in demonstrativeness. “Du Ponceau!”

Du Ponceau responded in kind, then took a step back and grinned. “You’ve got wrinkles.”

“You’ve got spectacles.” They were distinguished-looking spectacles with golden rims, but nonetheless. 

“I should have had them during the war, but I was busy. And vain.”

“Oh sweet Lord, I remember.” Lafayette ushered du Ponceau into the room and closed the door so they wouldn’t become a nuisance. “Georges, this is my dear friend Pierre Etienne -”

“Peter Stephen,” he corrected Lafayette, switching to American pronunciation as well as the anglicized names, the ones he’d chosen when he decided not to return to France. He’d applied for citizenship immediately after the war and, given his friends in high places, likely received it in about five seconds. 

“Right, I forgot. Peter Stephen du Ponceau. You know my stories about Baron von Steuben?”

“Yes, though I maintain that you must have made some of them up,” Georges joked. 

“Well, you could ask him for confirmation, because he was von Steuben’s secretary and interpreter. He was seventeen we met, and for awhile we were all afraid he'd die of consumption.” Lafayette paused to gauge whether du Ponceau would mind him sharing the story. “Also he once rode back into camp shouting that he’d seen a bunch of redcoats...which turned out to be some clothing on a washing line.”

“In my defense, the washing line was far away and honestly, what family has that many red items of clothing to wash all at once? The only reason I wasn’t chastised was that even General Washington laughed.” du Ponceau rubbed his hands together. “The drink I owe you. Come with me, now.”

“Why don’t you go see how Levasseur is doing, my son?” Lafayette suggested. Georges rolled his eyes at the transparent dismissal but said nothing. 

Du Ponceau pointed at Georges. “Be kind to your secretary. You never know what he might say about you if he outlives you. For example, von Steuben told me he thought Mount Vernon's architecture was ugly.” The two of them had drifted away from each other naturally and fondly once du Ponceau's secretarial services were no longer needed, so there would be nothing mean-spirited.

Except for the occasional journey or a bit of respite away from the city for his health, du Ponceau had spent his entire post-Revolutionary life here in Philadelphia. He effortlessly guided Lafayette through quieter streets where Lafayette was less likely to be noticed or recognized, carefully asking only about pleasant memories. Some topics were off the table, at least while they were sober, such as their deceased wives and their children and grandchildren that they adored but didn’t see often. It was a delicate process. They’d written to each other extensively over the years, but some of Lafayette’s changes of address had disrupted their correspondence.

“Here we are,” du Ponceau said when they reached a certain small but welcoming tavern. His smile grew wistful. “Hamilton was a busy man, but while living in this city he made the time to meet me here every once in awhile.”

There were few left who’d known Lafayette as a wide-eyed idealist of weak English speech but strong passion, always trying to keep his uniform free of mud and blood and not trip over his own feet, and who’d seen him fling himself in Washington’s arms upon happy reunion. There were few left who’d known du Ponceau as the Baron’s inquisitive shadow, the only one who dared to translate his curses verbatim rather than cleaning them up to suit Washington’s sensibilities, and who got away with it because of his deceptive appearance of innocence and frailty. They felt like they’d never run out of words to exchange between them. 

“...And he said you were trying to launch a military coup? You?”

Lafayette nodded. It hadn’t been funny at the time, but time had dulled the pain and sharpened the absurdity. “It’s almost as if Robespierre wasn’t a sensible man.”

“It’s almost as if he lost his head, eventually.”

“Indeed.” Lafayette dreamed of the sound of the guillotine sometimes. _Shingk._

“What I’m impressed by is that Hamilton’s sister-in-law and Laurens’....old friend’s...relative conspired together for your sake.” Du Ponceau was the only other person alive, as far as Lafayette knew, who’d heard Laurens speak truth about his feelings for Francis Kinloch in the past and Alexander Hamilton in their present. Laurens could get very maudlin on a cold night over a shared bottle of liquor when even those of reasonably high rank and better accommodations had to huddle for warmth. Du Ponceau hadn’t been as close to the three of them as they’d been to each other, as he owed fealty to a different general, but he’d known them all well and they knew he was a safe confidante. 

“It was wise of you not to go into politics, my friend, even when Monroe invited you to.” Lafayette and du Ponceau had the rare gift of being friends with both Hamilton and someone Hamilton loathed. With Lafayette (and Angelica Church) it was Thomas Jefferson. In du Ponceau’s case, it was James Monroe. “Are you still a judge?”

“Nooooo, I’ve had enough of all that. I’m happy to be free to pursue philology now.” He drummed his fingers on the table. “I’m getting angrier and angrier at those who dismiss the Indians as base savages, the more I study their languages. The complexity of their speech and ideas is no less than ours would be if you or I had simply lacked education, and the ones I have met in person have been as intelligent as any white man you might meet. I’m working on a book, you see. The first edition will be in French so I can submit it to the French Institute, so there will be more of an audience. _Mémoire sur le systeme grammatical des langues de quelques nations Indiennes de l'Amérique du Nord._ ”

“Brevity is the soul of wit,” Lafayette teased, in English.

“So’s your mother.” Which made no sense whatsoever, but du Ponceau seemed tickled by the non sequitur of a riposte. “I might study the writings of the Chinese next, because I am skeptical of those who claim they write in ideograms. Nobody can write in ideograms. Those characters must represent words! Words with SOUNDS! All men write as a representation of speech. I wish I could summon a Chinese person, who also spoke a language I speak, to easily prove this, but I have access to many artifacts and books to analyze, and that of neighboring peoples who use a modified version of their system.”

“Du Ponceau, while this is fascinating, you find it more fascinating than I do.”

Du Ponceau beamed. “This is why I like being drunk with old friends. The honesty of it. Oh, so, I’m now a member of three highly respected academic societies. Along with the likes of Benjamin Franklin before me. I worked very hard to get in.”

“Congratulations.” Lafayette considered the virtues of another round. He remained undecided. 

“You’ve been made an honorary member of all three, I believe. At least two, but I think all three. Just like that. When was the last time you wrote anything longer than a letter?”

“You were an honorary officer in the Army. Did you ever pick up a musket? Did you ever actually learn how to hold a sword properly? Didn’t the Baron give you one that you promptly forgot at an inn?”

“He did give me a very nice sword and said he’d teach me how to use it.” 

Childish, inebriated giggles ensued, though Lafayette felt a pang of guilt. Just as there had been rumors that Hamilton had risen through the ranks through secretly being Washington’s bastard, there had been rumors that du Ponceau was really only there as von Steuben’s catamite. Lafayette had done his best to bring the fear of furious Frenchman into anyone he caught spreading either of those notions. Du Ponceau’s personal relationships notwithstanding, he’d earned his place as a trusted member of von Steuben’s staff as honestly as any other, and seeing him at work for even an hour would confirm that. 

Then du Ponceau sighed. “As I said, Hamilton was busy, but when the anniversary of Laurens’ death came, and we could both snatch a few hours…do you realize that we’re both at least twice as old as he was?”

Lafayette called for another round. Du Ponceau knew the streets well and doubtless could guide him back. Only after the resupply did he ask, “Do you ever think he wanted to die? I suspected it from our first battle onwards.”

“He wasn’t like Hamilton and me, I think. We grew up, married, had children, were happy, and whatever would be said was sinful about, you know, we were able to leave that path behind without harm to our respectability. I think Laurens wasn’t like that, and I know he tried having a wife and child and being at least content, and I think he failed. I also know his relationship with his father wasn’t completely antagonistic, but wasn’t completely comfortable. Such a shame. Henry Laurens was very kind to me, when von Steuben and I went to speak to Congress.” He nudged Lafayette’s foot with his, companionably.

“Of course he was. You were very endearing,” Lafayette said, suspecting that his pronunciation was starting to fail. Despite them speaking almost entirely in French.

“Excuse you, I’m still endearing.”

“I’m sorry. Yes. You are. Everyone was nice to you.”

“Not true. There was a French nobleman who snubbed me and ruined one of my opportunities, but I can't hate him because he was guillotined years later and I didn't want his punishment to be _that_ severe. Also that soldier when I first came here who wanted to call me, 'the poncey', until I pointed out his name closely resembled 'idiot' in another language. After my father died and I went to work, grown men who were jealous that a fifteen-year-old kept impressing the boss urged their children to throw apples at me. And my first teacher, at the age of six, hit me because I corrected her Latin.”

Lafayette bit the back of his hand to keep his laughter from getting too loud. “Now, when I was a child, I was in trouble for trying to run off into the woods to hunt dangerous beasts.”

“This is one of the fundamental differences between us. I didn’t join the war because I was brave, you know.”

“You were brave as anyone.”

“Maybe, but that’s not why I joined. I joined because I thought it would be interesting.”

“I hope it was interesting enough for you.”

Du Ponceau shrugged. “Some of the people were moderately intriguing.”

“Shall we toast to them?”

They toasted. They toasted von Steuben and Washington, to France and America, to their own wives and children and grandchildren. They toasted their wives again, and decided to toast other women they admired. They toasted Angelica Church, Eliza Hamilton, Martha Washington, Dolley Madison, Charlotte Corday, Phillis Wheatley, and Sacagawea Charbonneau. Lafayette wasn’t sure who that last one was, but he followed along anyway. 

They toasted the English merchants who came to du Ponceau’s little island and tolerated a little boy following them around and picking up their speech. They toasted a dinner party held by a former member of King Louis XV’s spy ring, where a young Marquis heard ideas about freedom and justice that ignited his blood.

They toasted to the one time Lafayette heard Washington curse, which was at Charles Lee after the battle of Monmouth, and it was marvellous and inventive in profanity. They toasted to the one time du Ponceau heard Washington make a joke, sort of, which was at the expense of Benjamin Walker’s whines about how much his wife must surely miss him, when Washington and many others missed their wives, too, and unlike him weren’t also spending a great deal of time with with a certain Prussian who kept raving about how beautiful and angelic his face was. (Walker claimed she'd die of grief if he wasn't given leave to visit her. “She’ll have to put that in her book of sorrows,” Washington told him, dryly.)

They toasted a valiant son of ideals who thought his heart was the weakest part of him, when it was actually the strongest. They toasted a hungry son of survival whose words and thoughts outran everyone else’s, outran his own life, whose ambition and pride were both his salvation and his undoing. 

They raised a glass to freedom, and to what had been taken away in the process.

Then, as if by magic, it was just before dawn, and Lafayette was no longer in the tavern. He wasn’t sure how he made it back to the room with Georges, or how he’d ended up in bed with his son snoring nearby. He hoped he had made good goodbyes. Had he and du Ponceau kissed once, on the lips and not the cheek, safe in the shadow of an alley, or was that his imagination? He decided he didn’t mind either way. He went back to sleep.

He dreamed of marching, but every step was the smallest bit further off the ground.

**Author's Note:**

> I made up the thing with Lafayette's (real) secretary, Lafayette's family's reactions to post-imprisonment, the drinking with Hamilton postwar, the green sheep of Italy, and young Pierre translating curses verbatim.  
> Everything else they talk about is either complete fact or based on fact. For example, I don't know if people spread that specific rumour about du Ponceau, but his relationship with the Baron was an open secret. Du Ponceau doesn't out himself in his autobiography, understandably, but there's some coded stuff in there, and a good-humored gay joke.
> 
> Oh, and the book I mentioned him working on won him the Volney Prize, kind of like a French Nobel Prize. His autobio recounts him meeting his first Native American, who knew French because of Jesuit missionaries, and how much he was impressed by the man, how deep their conversation was, and how he wanted to be his best friend forever and ever. Some of du Ponceau's other collections of Native American grammar and vocabulary are still widely available and considered definitive references. 
> 
> His correct ideas about written Chinese/Hanzi were considered controversial as much as a century later by other white people who'd never actually interacted with literate Chinese humans. His opponents thought Chinese was like emojis and Yield signs and so forth. At least du Ponceau realized that they weren't so incredibly exotic that they wouldn't follow linguistic rules he already knew about, and he analyzed the modified Chinese characters used for Vietamese at the time to further support his theory.
> 
> In that autobiography, he says that Lafayette was one of his best friends until the day he died.


End file.
